Venezuelan Native Grecia Diaz Snacks Her Way to Success

Venezuela native Grecia Diaz started snacking her way to success during the pandemic.

A move to Pittsburgh finally paid dividends for the former nanny and her husband seeking affordable housing and better employment opportunities here. However, they knew no one.

That changed once Grecia, long impressed by American supermarkets, opened an online store in her basement and started ringing up sales.

“My husband is a vegetarian, and I was looking for healthy snacks where I didn’t have to buy a large number until I knew we liked it,” she explained. “That’s when I came up with the idea to sell different snacks – vegan, keto and gluten free – all available in one place with no membership fee and low shipping rates.”

She created the moniker SnackEVER and accompanying cheerful and distinctive American-made shipping boxes, with the promise of finding and delivering healthy, taste-tested, delicious snacks for consumers.

“I think the name and idea are catchy,” she added. “Our products not only taste good, but they’re unique, not found in most markets, and meet all nutritional guidelines and packaging standards.”

The online emporium emphasizes natural and organic nutrient-filled foods servicing businesses, schools, camps and families worldwide. Generating interest on Facebook and other social media sites, SnackEVER provides several national corporations and its own growing individual customer base with everything from vegan pretzels and marshmallows to Amaranth-grain products.

Navigation tools help more than 150 monthly non-corporate site visitors make selections based on category, diet or dorm room snack packs. The online store was such a success that Diaz’s house soon was bursting with products waiting to be packaged and delivered.

Within two years, they moved the family and its home-based business twice. Today, SnackEVER is housed in a separate, rented space in the city’s Brookline neighborhood.

Diaz started enrolling in entrepreneurial classes at the University of Pittsburgh Small Business Development Center (SBDC) conducted in both Spanish and English. SBDCs are U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA)- and state-funded entities helping entrepreneurs with no-cost counseling and low-cost training classes for every phase of small business development. Since January, more than 122 entrepreneurs in the seven-county area around Pittsburgh received assistance from the SBDC, creating 27 new business starts while supporting nearly 4,000 jobs.

“She’s such an optimist and always looking at her glass as half-full versus half-empty” said Brent Rondon, senior management consultant for international trade, who worked closely with Diaz. “Even though she’s good at ecommerce, she took advantage of our free search engine optimization services. Now, we’re working to position the company to supply to more businesses by helping her network at marketing events.”

Grecia said entrepreneurs routinely reach out hoping to share their treats with SnackEVER clients.

“A woman from Mexico contacted me about her wafers made with Amaranth, a trending, ancient grain full of nutrients,” she explained. “Her wafers are vegan, diabetic-friendly, low carb and have only one calorie per wafer. It’s easy to get filled up on five wafers.”

Diaz said those wafers, which come in 11 flavors, are one of her best-selling snacks. The two are now friends, bonding over their newfound success.

Diaz’s journey spanned many years and just as many miles, stretching from Venezuela to Connecticut to the Dominican Republic, and finally, to Pittsburgh. Hoping to learn English and escape the terrible and frightening conditions in Venezuela, Grecia came to the states when she was only 21, amazed at her new homeland.

“Everything here was so different…the weather, the opportunities and people respected the rules,” she reminisced.

She was especially enamored with grocery stores and pretzels – both nonexistent in her homeland. “Here everything is available in large stores and at reasonable prices,” she said. “I had never tasted pretzels before; we only had popcorn, cakes and cookies.”

SBA Western Pennsylvania District Director Dr. Kelly Hunt said she’s proud her agency and its resource partners are helping Garcia grow her unique idea. “Her story is so inspiring…we take supermarkets for granted and when Grecia needed healthy snacks that she couldn’t find locally, she created her own store,” said Hunt. “She’s also partnering, growing both entrepreneurship and her snack inventory – benefitting both creators and consumers.” 

Diaz, who hopes to one day supply her snack line to the U.S. military, said she’s amazed at the opportunities in America. “When you dream something, you really can do it.”

-###-